Bennie Bartlett Movies

Previously filmed in 1919, the Kate Douglas Wiggin novel Timothy's Quest was remade as a talkie in 1935. Dickie Moore plays Timothy Tarbox, a dewy-eyed orphan united in misery with his little sister Samantha (Virginia Weidler). The kids are taken in by maiden lady Vilda Cummins (Elizabeth Patterson), an old battle-ax who allegedly hates all children. It takes some doing, but Timothy and Samantha eventually win over Vilda, whose bark (as suspected) is far worse than her bite. A romantic subplot involving grown-ups Martha (Eleanor Whitney) and David (Tom Keene) never intrudes too long on the sentimental main story. Among the scenarists of Timothy's Quest are former Harold Lloyd director Gil Pratt and future MGM executive Dore Schary. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Three Married Men are Peter Cary (Roscoe Karns), Bill Mullens (William Frawley) and Bill's brother Jeff (Lynne Overman). Actually, at the beginning of the story, Peter is about to wed Jeff and Bill's sister Jennie (Mary Brian). Not wishing to invite Peter into their family, the Mullens boys try to scare him out of marrying Jennie by telling him horror stories of their own unhappy marriages. They do their job well, and soon the engagement is rent asunder -- whereupon Jeff and Bill realize they've made a mistake and try to bring the couple back together. Three Married Men was co-scripted by celebrated Broadway wit Dorothy Parker and her then-husband Alan Campbell. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Made with the full cooperation of the real-life Texas Rangers (who never met a publicity gimmick they didn't like), this sprawling historical western stars Fred MacMurray as Jim Hawkins, one of three outlaws working the Lone Star State in the years following the Civil War. Both Hawkins and his partner in crime Wahoo Jones (Jack Oakie) decide to go straight, but their bandit pal Sam McGee (Lloyd Nolan) has not quite seen the light. Eventually, Jim and Wahoo join the fledgling Texas Rangers, an organization dedicated to bringing law, order and honest government to their state, while McGee cuts a swath of terror with his new gang. When the two reformed outlaws are assigned to bring in their old friend Sam, Jim balks but Wahoo accepts. In the film's most talked-about scene, McGee smilingly puts a hole through Wahoo's stomach with a gun he has hidden under a table. Now motivated by revenge (although he couldn't say as much in a post-Production Code film), Jim vows to bring McGee to justice, dead or alive, but preferably the former. Released to coincide with the Texas Centennial, The Texas Rangers was remade in 1949 as Street of Laredo; there was also a 1940 sequel, The Texas Rangers Ride Again. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Scheduled to marry a man she doesn't love (and for good reason), spoiled heiress Barbara Blanchard (Claire Trevor) runs away from her wedding and hits the road. While hitchhiking, Trevor is given a ride by Bob Reynolds (Michael Whalen), a personable young auto salesman who's been hired to deliver what was then called a "caravan car" but would now be labelled an RV. As luck and the screenwriters would have it, a fugitive jewel thief hides his stolen gems in Bob's vehicle. Our hero is arrested, causing Barbara to cease her incessant put-downs of the poor guy. In trying to spring Bob from jail, Barbara realizes that she's fallen in love with him (why didn't she just ask the audience, who knew it all along?) It's positively awe-inspiring how many runaway-heiress films were spawned by the freak success of It Happened One Night. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Claudette Colbert is a young freethinking woman living in Salem, Massachusetts during the notorious 17th century "witch trials". Colbert falls in love with adventurer Fred MacMurray, causing no end of scandal with the Puritan townsfolk. A hateful little girl (Bonita Granville) pretends to be "possessed", thereby convincing the Salemites that Claudette is a witch. Tried and convicted of sorcery, the poor girl is sent to be burned at the stake, but is rescued in the nick of time by MacMurray, who convinces the townsfolk that they've been the victim of a hoax. Maid of Salem earned a footnote in entertainment history in 1937 when it was booed off the screen of New York's Paramount theatre by fans who wanted to see the evening's real attraction--a performance by Benny Goodman and his orchestra. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Financier J.B. Ball (Edward Arnold) -- known in the press as "the Bull of Broad Street" -- may be one of the wealthiest investment bankers in the country, but he also knows the value of a dollar. And when his wife (Mary Nash) spends 50,000 of them on a sable coat, he is driven into such a fury in the ensuing argument on the roof of their Fifth Avenue townhouse, that he throws the coat into the street -- where it promptly lands on the head of Mary Smith (Jean Arthur), a clerk-typist on her way to work, riding on the upper deck of a double-decker bus, ruining her hat in the process. She jumps off the bus to try to return the coat, but Ball insists that she keep it. What she really needs, however, is not a 50,000-dollar sable coat so much as a ride to work -- as she doesn't even have a dime for bus fare -- and perhaps a new hat. Ball obliges, taking her to one of the top clothing stores in New York, buying her an expensive fur hat to go with the coat, and then dropping her at work in his limo. Her superiors, seeing her decked out in a sable coat and a new hat, and getting out of the chauffeured car, conclude that Mary is a kept woman, and, therefore, unfit to work for the boys magazine where she is employed, and they fire her. Now out of work and virtually broke, she seems to have become a victim of random fate, but suddenly the scales start to tip the other way from the very same misunderstanding that got her fired. Having been seen in the company of J.B. Ball -- whose name she didn't even get -- she is rumored to be his mistress; the prissy clothing store proprietor (Franklin Pangborn) spreads this story, and that turns Mary into the object of attention for Mr. Louis Louis (Luis Alberni), the owner of a failed luxury hotel on which Ball's bank holds the mortgage, and is about to foreclose. For reasons that she can't begin to understand, since there is nothing going on between her and J.B. Ball (whose name she doesn't even know), or between her and anyone, Louis moves her into the most luxurious suite in his hotel for a dollar a day, asking her only to inform "that certain someone" of how she loves living there. Mary has no idea of who "that certain someone" is, or what Louis is talking about, but she needs a place to live, and Louis is insistent. She still needs to eat, and, while trying to get a meal at the automat, she crosses paths with a handsome, well-meaning, but inept waiter (Ray Milland), who gets fired for helping her. She takes him into her suite so he has a place to stay, and the two fall in love in the course of finding out about each other. She knows that he is John Ball Jr., but doesn't realize that he is the son of J.B. Ball, trying to make it on his own, nor does she yet realize who J.B. Ball is, in terms of being the man who gave her the coat and the new hat, or one of the wealthiest men in the country. But after the elder Ball spends an innocent night at the Hotel Louis, a gossip columnist named "Wallace Whistling" (William Demarest) prints that he is keeping a woman at the hotel, and suddenly the Hotel Louis, perceived as a fashionable playground for the upper-crust, is filled with guests. This multiple case of mistaken identity plunges through two or three new layers, eventually bringing about an impending stock market crash to rival 1929, before Mary discovers who her would-be benefactor and her would-be fiancé are. She bails them out of the jam that they're in, also restoring the Ball's marriage, her own reputation, and her romance with Ball's son in the process. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Gang Bullets was one of a myriad of late-1930s Monogram crime pictures, bearing such interchangable titles as I Am a Criminal, Convict's Code and Federal Bullets. Morgan Wallace plays a Capone-like racketeer named Anderson, who after being chased out of one town by the authorities immediately sets up shop in another. Unable to get any tangible evidence against Anderson, DA Wayne (Charles Trowbridge) orders his assistant Carter (Robert Kent) to dig up some dirt on the gangster boss. To do this, Carter pretends to turned crooked, joining Anderson's gang in order to accumulate evidence. Alas, Carter's girl friend Patricia (Anne Nagel) knows nothing of her boyfriend's subterfuge, and she suspects the worst. With such formidable henchmen as John Merton and Carleton Young at his beck and call, it's something of a surprise when Anderson comes a-cropper in the last reel. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Just Around the Corner is the film in which little Shirley Temple ends the Depression all by herself! The story starts realistically enough, with 10-year-old Penny Hale (Temple) sharing a basement apartment with her widowed father Jeff (Charles Farrell, in his final Fox film). Once a prosperous architect, Jeff has been working as a hotel janitor-engineer ever since the Wall Street Crash. Ordered by pompous hotel concierge Waters (Franklin Pangborn) to keep her place, Penny nonetheless has fun wandering the lobbies of the posh establishment under the watchful and protective eyes of her friends, Kitty the maid (Joan Davis), Gus the chauffeur (Bert Lahr) and Corporal Jones the doorman (Bill Robinson). Having been told by her dad that the only person who can pull the country out of the Depression is Uncle Sam, Penny becomes convinced that goateed billionaire tycoon S. G. Henshaw (Claude Gillingwater Sr.) is Uncle Sam come to life. Charming her way into the heart of the irascible Henshaw, Penny convinces him to help the economy get started again. Not only does Uncle Sam accomplish this by creating thousands of new jobs, but he also manages to give Penny's father Jeff a new start in life, much to the delight of Jeff's sweetheart Lola (Amanda Duff). The film's highlights are Shirley Temple's always-delightul dance duets with Bill "Bojangles" Robinson; less easy to take when seen today is the closing "Buttons and Epaulets" production number, performed by a chorus of servile blacks. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Ageing, alcohol-benumbed John Barrymore had one last great performance left in him before his death in 1942, and The Great Man Votes was the ideal vehicle for that performance. Barrymore plays a widowed, once-distinguished professor, lately reduced to being a night watchman. He tries to stay off the "hard stuff" for the sake of his two small children, Virginia Weidler and Peter Holden, but his lack of responsibility nearly loses him the custody of both kids. Meanwhile, scheming politico Donald MacBride discovers that his winning the upcoming mayoral election hinges upon one single vote--and guess whose vote that is? With "VIP" status suddenly thrust upon him, Barrymore regains his children, his former status in life, and (as a last-minute plot twist reveals) his self respect. Director Garson Kanin was so anxious to extract a good performance from John Barrymore that he ordered everyone on the set to treat the fading matinee idol with deference and respect. Unaccustomed to such treatment in his later years, Barrymore looked around the set and bellowed, "Which Barrymore do you think I am, Lionel?" Despite his precarious physical condition and his reputation for temperamental outbursts, Barrymore was the soul of cooperation on the set. His fiery temper flared only once, when child actor Virginia Weidler calculatedly attempted to steal a scene from him. Though appalled at the spectacle of The Great Profile profanely chewing out the tiny Weidler, Kanin admitted in retrospect that Barrymore was absolutely right: the kid was intruding on one of the star's soliloquies, and nobody did that to John Barrymore. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Hugh Herbert is the head of The Family Next Door; he's a plumber of modest means and questionable skills. The rest of Herbert's family would love to climb the social ladder and improve their lot, but their dreams are always compromised by papa's ineptitude. In time-honored fashion, Hugh saves the day at the last minute with a sudden act of acute competence. Ruth Donnelly plays Herbert's beleaguered wife, while Eddie Quillan is the oldest son. Universal Studios' The Family Next Door looks like it was intended as the vanguard of a "B" series which never materialized. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this comedy drama, young high school student Henry Aldrich tries to tone down his natural mischievousness and shuck the reputation of being the worst student in school. It isn't easy and his father, who was an excellent student at Princeton, doesn't help. Fortunately, by the story's end, the young man is able to overcome all obstacles and prove himself. Following this film, the character of Henry Aldrich became popular and so several subsequent films were made around him. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Radio humorist Bob Burns plays the title role in Alias the Deacon. Based on a stage play by John B. Hymer and LeRoy Clements (previously filmed in 1927 with Jean Hersholt), the story concerns a philosophical drifter named Deke Caswell (Burns) who is mistaken for the new deacon of a small town. A gambler by nature, Caswell decides to continue the clerical pose so that he can divest the locals of their hard-earned dollars. Instead, he turns honest, eventually solving all of the town's problems. A subplot concerns the "scandalous" (but wholly innocent) relationship between truck driver Johnny Sloan (Dennis O'Keefe) and hitchhiker Phyllis (Peggy Moran). This being a Universal film of the early 1940s, it was all but mandatory for Mischa Auer to show up in an incongrous but amusing supporting role. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide